A house was posted for rent, nice neighborhood, good price. When you contact the landlord he says he needs proof of your credit score, please go to the following website to obtain your credit score. Of course the website is a phishing site and they will steal your identity once you input all the information. It's a smooth one though, because everything is well-written and sounds reasonable until you stop to think about it.

Logged

"From a procrastination standpoint, today has been wildly successful."

The big one we have going around here (Seattle) and I am sure elsewhere in the country/world is the “Rental Housing” scam.

The scammers will go online and post ads for houses and apartments for rent. They make up some reason that they can’t show the unit (usually that it is occupied) or they do everything via email. They take the marks money and give them a key that looks like an apartment key but usually isn’t. The person shows up to move in to find out that they were scammed. Sometimes this is done by shady realtors or someone from their office so they actually CAN show the home by using the master key on the door! Sometimes the person moves in and discovers it when the house is sold and the new owner’s take possession!

Our company got hit with this, someone was advertising some of our units and when the tenant showed up to move in “The manager will give you the key when you sign the lease” they discover that they lost all their money. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for low income apartments to be leased out of a central office due to the huge amount of paperwork so it doesn’t raise any red flags for the tenant. That one really ticks me off! On the plus side for the tenant, these units really were available and we were usually able to help them get them housed. Bad side, they were out the money they paid the scammers.

With these, they hack into someone's email account and send the email out to the entire address book hoping to catch someone. It happened to a friend of mine - and he had a hell of a time cleaning his email account up after that (they changed his password so he couldn't get back in to block them out of it!)

Ugh, I hate those. My best friend's hotmail account got hacked, and they sent around emails promoting weight loss meds or something. Now, thankfully I and DH (who also got an email from her) know that she is VERY against using meds to lose weight (at least the sort that claim that all you have to do is take the meds), and that she's a big believer in Weight Watchers so I emailed her at her gmail account to alert her.

Logged

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. Be cheerful, strive to be happy. -Desiderata

With these, they hack into someone's email account and send the email out to the entire address book hoping to catch someone. It happened to a friend of mine - and he had a hell of a time cleaning his email account up after that (they changed his password so he couldn't get back in to block them out of it!)

Ugh, I hate those. My best friend's hotmail account got hacked, and they sent around emails promoting weight loss meds or something. Now, thankfully I and DH (who also got an email from her) know that she is VERY against using meds to lose weight (at least the sort that claim that all you have to do is take the meds), and that she's a big believer in Weight Watchers so I emailed her at her gmail account to alert her.

One of my ex-school teacher aunts had the same thing on FB. The language of the email was really not her style and it was chock full of misspellings. I think she got a whole lot of "Aunt, I think your FB has been hacked..."

I actually just finished a book in which one of the main character's side businesses is writing scam emails...but, in her defense, she's be strong-armed into it by a crime syndicate that is holding her debt over her head.

Logged

When angels go bad, they go worse than anyone. Remember, Lucifer was an angel. ~The Marquis De Carabas

Incident #1-My former boss went by his middle name both personally and professionally. Let's say his name was Robert Jonathan and he went by Jon. He was sort of an oversharer so I knew a great deal about his personal life/financial life, etc. On top of that I had a close professional relationship with his wife. All this is to say I very well knew about Jon's personal and professional life.

So one day I get a call from someone with a quite thick accent asking for Robert. I immediately knew that this was not someone who knew Jon; it was a dead giveaway. I asked who was calling and was told "a business associate." I probed for more information and was haughtily told that it was none of my business but that he and Robert were involved in a very lucrative business dealing and that I had better put the call through now or he would certainly see that I was fired. Of course I knew this was a total scam so I told him that "Robert" was out of the office and offered to take his name and phone number. He refused and actually asked for his cell phone number. I terminated the conversation at that point. Jon and I often joked about how I had screwed him out of a "lucrative business deal."

Incident #2: I guess my DH does listen to me sometimes. The phone rings one day and he answers it. I hear from his side of the conversation that it's someone claiming that we have won something. I instantly go on alert, listening to make sure he doesn't start giving out info that he shouldn't. After a few moments, he says, "I'm going to let you talk to my wife about this." He tells me quickly that it's someone claiming we've won a trip to Montreal to go to a concert to see a very popular band perform. Sounds sketchy to me.

I take the phone from him, and fully expect that it's a scammer. The first words out of my mouth are "Whatever you say, I will not be giving you my credit card number." The caller starts laughing and says "I don't want your cc number!" He's a DJ at a local radio station-and I recognized his voice easily-and we really did win the contest. I asked my DH if he remembered entering it and sure enough he did; the radio station had their step-van parked in front of his workplace one day, and as he was walking by they called him over and gave him a hat, a bumper sticker and had him sign up for the contest. He didn't give it any thought afterward.

We did take the trip and it was great, even though the concert got cancelled b/c the lead singer had an injury and couldn't perform. But even that didn't bother us, because we actually had seen that band play, on the same tour, a couple of months before, when they played in our city!

Logged

What have you got? Is it food? Is it for me? I want it whatever it is!

The most common one was 'The Puppy Scam.' We usually got this a few times each year.

It always involved purebred puppies of some popular bre*d (pugs and bulldogs were common).The puppies were usually $300 - pretty cheap for those bre*ds.The pups always came from 'champion blood lines' and were AKC registered.

The ads never had a phone number, only an email address.The ads were always to run for 30 days and sometimes they even emailed me the CC number.

In this scam, it's all done by email and you send a 'deposit' and they will 'hold a puppy for you'.

Aside from the fact that a) there was never any contact information for the seller, b) the cc's were invariably stolen and c) most kennels selling dogs in Canada would almost certainly register the dogs with the *Canadian* Kennel Club and not the American Kennel Club...well, yeah seems perfectly legit. Not!!

Logged

"I think her scattergun was only loaded with commas and full-stops, although some of them cuddled together for warmth and produced little baby colons and semi-colons." ~ Margo

My grandmother got involved with a religious scammer way back when I was a kid.

A preacher by the name of Smith set up church inside a house in her community. He got my aunt and her husband involved, who then brought Grandma into it. Grandma then tried to get my mom interested - I remember going to one service and, even at 8 years old, I knew something was off. I remember asking Mom, "Is Mr. Smith a real preacher or just pretending?" Grandma started giving money hand over fist to this guy, and even tried to tap Mom for money for this "church." Mom refused, which caused a rift lasting for months.

To end the story, Smith ran off with my aunt's husband's girlfriend and all the money he collected from the suckers members of his church, leaving his wife to face prosecution. The police finally caught him pulling the same scam up in Sacramento.

Someone tried to scam me through Craigslist. I was selling a locket and someone from NY wanted to buy it if I would send it to them. I said sure if they could pay by paypal. I was emailed a very realistic looking fake payment email "from paypal" with an address to send the locket to Nigeria. I can see how easily someone might think it was a legitimate payment into paypal. It wasn't and I did not mail the locket to Nigeria or NY. But I did get a laugh out of them emailing asking for me to send it right away.

When I worked at a bank, I answered the phone call of this older man who sold something online and the payment check he received bounced. It was a cashiers (not personal) check for thousands of dollars so he trusted it and didn't make sure it cleared before mailing the merchandise. Poor man sounded so devastated. I sent him to the fraud department, but I don't know what happened after that.

It was a cashiers (not personal) check for thousands of dollars so he trusted it and didn't make sure it cleared before mailing the merchandise.

A cashier's check is a check drawn on the bank itself. So unless the check was forged, I don't understand how it could "bounce" unless the bank went under -- this is why people pay for cashier's check, for the absolute guarantee that it will be cashed.

It was a cashiers (not personal) check for thousands of dollars so he trusted it and didn't make sure it cleared before mailing the merchandise.

A cashier's check is a check drawn on the bank itself. So unless the check was forged, I don't understand how it could "bounce" unless the bank went under -- this is why people pay for cashier's check, for the absolute guarantee that it will be cashed.

It was probably forged. If he didn't cash it at the bank it was drawn on, a good forgery from another bank will probably get accepted by an unsuspecting teller.

I received an interesting email stating that I was an heir to Princess Diana's fortune.

hmm, you would think one of her sons would be a more logical heir, but what good luck to you!

Logged

In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults. ~Thomas Szasz